Treasure Map

Treasure Map
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Seaside
Illustrator(s)	Matthias Catrein
Card text
Trash this and a Treasure Map from your hand. If you trashed two Treasure Maps, gain 4 Golds onto your deck.

Treasure Map is an Action card from Seaside. By itself, a single Treasure Map does nothing besides trash itself; however, when you play a Treasure Map and have a second one in your hand, you gain 4 Gold cards and put them on your deck.

FAQ

Official FAQ (2022)

• When you play this, you trash it and trash another Treasure Map from your hand, if you can.
• If you did trash another copy of Treasure Map, then you gain 4 Golds, putting them onto your deck instead of your discard pile.
• If you did not have another copy of Treasure Map in hand, then you just trash the played Treasure Map and nothing else happens.
• Using Throne Room on Treasure Map is not trashing two Treasure Maps.

Other rules clarifications

• If you play a Command variant such as Band of Misfits, which then plays a Treasure Map, you can't trash the Treasure Map from the Supply, so you will fail to gain 4 Golds.
  • You gain the Golds if you play the early versions of cards like Band of Misfits as Treasure Map.
• If you Possess someone and make them trash 2 Treasure Maps, both of them are set aside, and you gain 4 Golds to your discard pile.
• Both Treasure Maps have to be trashed at once. This means that if you draw the second Treasure Map as a result of trashing the first one (e.g. by trashing a Cultist to Sewers), you can't trash the second Treasure Map for 4 Golds.

Strategy

Treasure Map is not usually a very useful card. First, its Gold-gaining ability is inconvenient to activate: it requires you to spend two gains on Treasure Maps, then collide the two copies in your hand and use some of your terminal space to play one of them. Second, its effect when activated is generally not helpful. In many Kingdoms, you'll be better off generating primarily using Action cards rather than Treasures; even if you do want some Golds in your deck, four of them on top of your drawpile is typically not ideal. Unless you can draw them immediately, you'll start your next turn with four stop cards in your hand, making it unlikely that you'll manage to draw your deck or put the Golds to good use by finding your +Buy, trash-for-benefit cards, or anything else you'd like to collide with them.

The best-case scenario for making use of Treasure Map is one in which your engine has substantial overdraw, but the Kingdom lacks sufficient Action-based payload and you need to ramp up your production more quickly than by gaining Treasures one by one. In this situation, the ideal way to use Treasure Map is to gain-and-play two of them after drawing your deck, then draw the four Golds as well. You can then make use of them immediately (for or otherwise, e.g. by Remodelling them), while remaining confident that you can draw your deck again next turn.

Outside this relatively narrow type of situation, e.g. in a money strategy or with an engine that isn't yet reliably overdrawing, gaining two or more Treasure Maps and hoping to draw them together is unlikely to work out well. In Kingdoms that have little else to do, however, strong trashing such as Chapel or Donate can enable quick Treasure Map activation and an early start to greening with a deck mostly composed of Golds. In the absence of such trashing, Sifters and effects such as Save and Way of the Turtle can also facilitate early collision and may be moderately effective methods of adding Golds.

External strategy articles

Note: Article(s) below are by individual authors and may not represent the community's current views on cards, but may provide more in-depth information. Caveat emptor.

• 2012 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Trash this and another copy of Treasure Map from your hand. If you do trash two Treasure Maps, gain 4 Gold cards, putting them on top of your deck.	Seaside	October 2009
		Trash this and a Treasure Map from your hand. If you trashed two Treasure Maps, gain 4 Golds onto your deck.	Seaside (2017 printing)	July 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	藏寶圖 (pron. cáng bǎo tú)
Czech	Mapa pokladu
Dutch	Schatkaart			Vernietig deze Schatkaart en nog een Schatkaart uit je hand. Als je 2 Schatkaarten hebt vernietigd: pak 4 Goud en leg deze op je trekstapel.	Hijs de Zeilen (2de Editie) 999 Games (2022)
Finnish	Aarrekartta
French	Carte aux trésors
German	Schatzkarte			Entsorge diese und eine weitere Schatzkarte aus deiner Hand. Wenn du das machst: Nimm dir 4 Gold und lege diese verdeckt auf deinen Nachziehstapel.	(2009) "Wenn du das machst: zwei Schatzkarten entsorgst:…" "...lege diese verdeckt sofort…" one or more other versions listed here
	Schatzkarte			Entsorge diese Karte und eine Schatzkarte aus der Hand. Wenn du 2 Schatzkarten entsorgt hast, nimm 4 Gold und lege sie auf deinen Nachziehstapel.	(Nachdruck 2018) "...und lege sie auf deinen Nachzieh­stapel."
	Schatzkarte			Entsorge diese Karte und eine Schatzkarte aus deiner Hand. Wenn du 2 Schatzkarten entsorgt hast, nimm 4 Gold auf deinen Nachziehstapel.	(Nachdruck 2021) 2. Edition (2022)
Italian	Mappa del Tesoro
Japanese	宝の地図 (pron. takara no chizu)			これと手札の宝の地図を廃棄する。2枚の宝の地図を廃棄した場合、金貨4枚を山札の上に獲得する。
Korean	보물지도 (pron. bomuljido)
Polish	Mapa skarbu			Wyrzuć na śmietnisko tę i jeszcze jedną Mapę skarbu z ręki. Jeżeli wyrzuciłeś dwie Mapy skarbu, dodaj 4 karty Złota i połóż je na wierzchu swojej talii.	(2016)
	Mapa skarbu			Wyrzuć na Śmietnisko tę i jeszcze jedną Mapę skarbu z ręki. Jeśli wyrzuciłeś dwie Mapy skarbu, dodaj 4 karty Złota na wierzch swojej talii.	II Edycja (2022)
Russian	Карта Сокровищ (pron. karta sokrovishsh)			Выкиньте эту карту и другую Карту Сокровищ из руки. Если вы выкинули две Карты Сокровищ, получите четыре Золота на верх колоды.
Spanish	Mapa del Tesoro			Elimina esta carta y otro Mapa del Tesoro de tu mano. Si lo haces, ganas 4 cartas de Oro, que se colocan encima de tu mazo.

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

This originally came from the ruins of the 7th expansion. I moved it just because of the name. How do you not do a Treasure Map in your Seaside expansion? The first version only gained you three Golds, and didn't put them on top. It looked cute but was not a real strategy. Putting the Golds on top helped tie it in with the next turn theme, and upping them to four made the card good enough to actually go for.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Seaside Cards

Retrospective

I like Treasure Map as is.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, What Donald X. Might Do With a Dominion Time Machine

Is Treasure Map swingy?

In playtesting the struggle was making sure this was good enough to sometimes go for. Once it made 3 Golds and they didn't go on top. Some people do single this out as a high-variance card they don't like. I think the hate is similar to Pirate Ship's; in some groups everybody buys it, thus whoever bought it and got luckiest wins, and then the card looks broken when really it requires good card interactions to be exciting. King's Court has higher variance and gets fewer complaints, though some people do hate it (especially, players who are really focused on skill winning out); I think there it's just, playing something three times is something a lot of people can appreciate, and the card isn't as blatant about its variance. And then Platinum, I bet a lot of people don't even think of Platinum as high-variance. Certainly no-one complains about it. So anyway yeah, Treasure Map, not the swingiest card, but very in your face about its swinginess.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Which is the card you hate the most?